Falling Without Style

During my senior year in high school, I met a girl through a mutual friend. For the sake of this story, let’s just call her “Mal.” She went to another high school in the same town, and we bonded primarily over the hardships of schoolwork, which at times included joint study sessions, and shared culture. Our conversations, both online and in person, were often playful. We teased and bantered-- flirted, almost. Independently from the old saying, we developed this farewell we used exclusively between us: “Good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite!” That was part of our display of affection. We were more just confidantes than ever truly interested in each other, but we were real-- or so I thought.

I had been a proponent of honesty, during my younger years. Even when responding to such trivial questions as, “How are you?” I had often answered with, “tired,” “depressed,” or “shitty.” It was this foundation, an honesty which demanded intent when presenting such basic queries, upon which our friendship stood. I had no idea, then, that this foundation was set upon sand.

I enrolled at Washington University in St. Louis as a biomedical engineering major, my freshman year of college. In those days, WashU was among the top 10 universities in the nation, as ranked by U.S. News. As an Asian-American student that had totally bought into the Model Minority stereotype, to be there was absolutely wonderful. However, I was unprepared for the independence of life far from home and the responsibility of learning in that type of environment. Before long, I was shell-shocked by a string of personal disappointments and academic failures. The mounting pressure that resulted from the growing incongruity between my expectations and reality caused me eventually to drop out during my second semester. My community witnessed me return home in defeat.

My basis for self-worth was yanked like a rug from under me; I stumbled and had my nose bloodied before a watching world.

Less than a year later, I gained acceptance to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in spite of my unresolved psychological issues. I’d gotten in touch with Mal again, who’d been there for a year, by then. She’d offered to walk me around campus a bit, answer any questions I had-- serve as a welcoming party, of sorts. I accepted. We met for lunch one day, and she greeted me with, “How are you?” I don’t even remember what I said, only that it was something along the lines of, “I’m alright.” My answer would have been fine, except that I had not yet perfected my mask, my façade of strength.

I still sported a splotch of crimson, spreading from my nose. I had not yet learned to lie with my face, thus make the lie complete.

She asked again, for confirmation, and my repeated reply gave it. Upon seeing the incongruity between my words and my face, her own face fell. The light in her eyes dimmed in response to the darkness in my own. The rest of our lunch and subsequent time together could not be saved.

I had needed understanding. I realize now that Mal would have tried to give it, and that effort would have been enough for me. It would have been better for both of us if I had said something-- anything-- but I did not even know to ask. I would rather have sweat and cried inside of my mask than let her attempt to help me breathe by taking it off. My next breath would have been the one needed for our friendship to live. When I think of her, I am confronted by a nagging sense of loss that consists of unrealized possibilities and un-lived futures.

Mal is not alone in the place to which I exiled her. Within the hollowness behind my mask, whispers escape my lips and echo with the names of a dozen lost friends.

Fragments: Old Wounds 1

Sometimes, I feel like I've dropped into this world from the sky, or maybe like the paralytic, down through the roof. And this world is middle-class, Chinese Christian evangelical church. But unlike Jesus' reaction to the paralytic, his church has not welcomed me and healed my wounds. Instead, they would like me to knock and be ushered in from the front door.

Fragments: Self-Analysis 1

I wish I was even more ready to move on. I am half-way there, at the moment. I see my parents' life, and it is that future I fear. I want no part of it, but fear as well the uncertainty of finding my own way. I find myself stuck here in the middle, as always. As usual, I am consigned to the fringes, the in-between places, the margins. I just can't seem to write between the lines. I once said that I was the page that spit back the ink printed on it. But now I realize that my true position is that of the words that fail to make it to the page. I am the unpublished novel, the unperformed concerto, the unrevealed painting. I am the unspoken "I love you," "I do," and "Goodbye," all rolled into one. I am a Christ still unresurrected on the fourth day.

Fragments: Confession to a Beloved

God forbid your heart be given to me. My hands, too indelicate in grasping your heart, will break it so. I cannot catch a heart thrown thus... it will slip bleeding from my grasp.

You are lovely, lovelier than I can stand. I hold you close to hear your heartbeat sing my praises. You are an ornament on my arm, an accessory that accentuates my aura. My vanity, assuaged, will drown us all in unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

What I'd say at a funeral (from an old poem I wrote)

Your eyes flutter - not open, but closed - as you try to blink back the tears, but give up. You cry for another beautiful pair that could not close themselves for the last time. But let dry your eyes for the singular hope that there is a heavenly realm, and let soar your heart for that beautiful pair that elsewhere has opened, better and brighter than ever before. Lift up your chin, that your face might catch the sun that rises on this morning - a morning made for those in mourning.

Congratulations

Congratulations, from me to all you friends of mine, for having finished this leg of your journey. I yell from a vast distance behind you, hoping my words will be carried on the wind, through your ears, and into your hearts - so that your legs are strengthened for the journey ahead.

Yet half of me hopes you won't hear this, because I don't want you to look back over your shoulders. You would see me in a shameful state, unable to be fully happy for all of you because of the selfish me that sees in you what I could have been.

At the same time, it makes my congratulations all the more significant, in light of the fact that I wouldn't have offered them at all, some time ago. Where before there was no room in my heart for any of you, there is now some.

I'm sorry that I am so selfish. I don't mean to make this about me. I'm sorry that I've been unable to look past my own circumstances to take joy in your successes. I'll come around completely, eventually - I promise. But for now, I entreat you to accept this pittance of praise. Once again, congratulations, Class of 2010.

Fragment 1

He opts to play politely, contorting his face to a facsimile of theirs, smile and all. If only they knew that, beyond all the perfunctory "how do you do's," mundane "have a good day's," and the rest of the affectations of small talk, there exists a person. If only they were all fencers. At least when fencers don their masks, their dances are short and they try to get to the heart of a person. The last time anybody had even tried, he had, by knee-jerk reaction, parried.


God dammit, he'd parried.

Aight, ima lay it out for you

I often forget to charge my phone. I don't even know where it is right now. But nobody ever calls me, so I actually don't even need to charge it or know where it is.

My best friend, on most days, is the fucking sandwich in my hand. It doesn't fail to tell me what's up, whether it be turkey or ham with a spread of goat cheese on whole wheat. I show my appreciation by taking a huge bite out of it. This is love.

A volte, scrivo in italiano. È un'altra metafora per la nostra distanza. Sento come, anche in inglese, non sono capito.

La Luce dell'Amore

Non capisco come ancoro respirare, esattamente come non capisco la grazia di Dio. Non conosco come dire questo ma che la solitudine corrode un buco in me. Questa solitudine da forme al amore non possiedo. Se la solitudine è un buco in me, l'amore è la macchia luminosa nella mia ombra. La luce di Cristo traspare il buco in me, e definisce un amore capisco. Questa è la mia vita, l'atto di equilibrando la speranza e la disperazione.

Bevo l'Alienazione Liquida

Coffee is my life, my heart in a cup. I clutch it in my hands, then drink down all of the rich bitterness. It's chock-full of ellipses, which summarize the distance between myself and others. Taste it well, take it all. Love is jumping from one dot to the next, hoping that the sentence, the conversation, the relationship, continues on the other side, not trailing off into nothingness.

What was the atomic bomb but an ontological statement? "We hold power over your existence." A wonderful end to the U.S. military's island-hopping campaign, no? They got sick of continually jumping from one dot to the next across the ocean made bitter as coffee by the never-ending nature of the chase, and decided to change the way that relationship was going to be.

But I'm not a violent person. This ends only when you decide to actually be on the other end of these ellipses, these islands in the gulf between us, so I can finally arrive to where you are. Or even decide to meet me in the middle. Or even decide, after all this time, that we can do without them.